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*Includes pictures *Includes contemporary accounts *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading "If you'll gather 'round me, children, a story I will tell'Bout Pretty Boy Floyd, an Outlaw, Oklahoma knew him well." - Woody Guthrie, "The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd" (1939) November 1, 1932 was a fine autumn day in the sleepy, cotton-farming city of Sallisaw, Oklahoma, the heart of Sequoyah County. The blinding rays of the midday sun were shining their brightest, but the otherwise blistering heat was offset by a brisk breeze. These were ideal conditions for a Tuesday, a seemingly pedestrian day of the week, but what was unfolding in the Sallisaw State Bank was anything but ordinary. At first glance, it would seem as if a traveling carnival or a homegrown celebrity had come to town. The sidewalks of the city bank and its surrounding establishments were teeming with locals, generations of families, young lovebirds, and clusters of friends. Indeed, they had convened to witness a spectacle, albeit one of an entirely different sort. The doors of the Sallisaw State Bank swung open with a resounding bang, signaling the start of the show. Out staggered a pair of thieves, each toting bulging sacks of bills and coins and glinting Colt .45s. The hogtied tellers inside the bank desperately wriggled across the floor to voice their distress, craning their necks and directing their muffled screams towards the open door. One had even managed to squirm out of his gag and was calling out to the crowd across the street for help. Unfortunately, his cries were negated, not by the spectators' own cries of alarm, but by thunderous applause, supplemented by whoops, whistles, and a constellation of waving handkerchiefs. Some of those who cleared the path for the robbers' getaway car were supposedly patrons present in the establishment during the stick-up itself. The ringleader, a striking young gentleman with a square jaw, a smoldering squint, and dark hair slicked back with scented pomade, acknowledged his admirers with a quick nod before ducking into the running vehicle. According to local lore, quite a few of the spectators had been briefed on the robbery beforehand by none other than the ringleader himself. So bold was he in his endeavors that he strolled into the bank's neighboring establishments in the days prior and simply asked its proprietors to refrain from ringing the cops, to which they gladly agreed. He even left those complicit with enough time to extract their savings from the bank. The dashing ringleader, hailed by many as the "Robin Hood of Cookson Hills," was none other than Pretty Boy Floyd, a perplexing character as abhorred as he was revered. To the feds, Pretty Boy Floyd was a venomous, manipulative scoundrel who was egregiously lionized as an anti-hero with a heart of gold. A career bank robber supposedly associated with up to 40 bank robberies, his face would soon be plastered on the 1934 poster of the FBI's Most Wanted alongside John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and Alvin Karper. He was also implicated in multiple murders, yet Pretty Boy Floyd's admirers have been willing to overlook these crimes, with some even providing justifications for his behavior and contending that he was unfairly vilified for fighting an unjust system. To them, he was singled out as a scapegoat, and he used that angle himself, once noting, "I guess I've been accused of everything that has happened, except the kidnapping of the Lindbergh child, last spring." As this all suggests, it is virtually impossible to assemble a thoroughly objective profile of the outlaw more than 80 years after his life of crime.
Unlike so many murders of unarmed black and brown bodies by police officers, the viral video recording of George Floyd’s modern-day lynching set into motion a Kairos moment in time, the impact of which is still being felt over a year later. How/Why did God usher in this season of transformation now? Can God’s Word teach us how to reverse engineer communal violent scapegoating? What role can each of us play to eradicate police brutality? From Scapegoats to Lambs: How God’s Word Speaks to George Floyd’s Murder audaciously confronts these issues stemming from Charles L. Brown Jr.’s unflinching belief that God’s Word is uniquely qualified to preach to and through the legacy of the suffering of black and brown bodies, and that the Lord has a way of humbling the powerful and empowering the humiliated. In adopting what he calls “hood hermeneutics,” Brown joins the ranks of a growing number of unapologetic, black, Christian intellectuals unashamedly challenging the Church to mine the text with ferocious passion until it speaks compellingly to the struggle of those violently scapegoated.
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark did not embark on their epic trek across the continent alone-dozens of men and eventually one woman accompanied them. The towering triumph of the Lewis and Clark expedition is due in no small part to the skill and fortitude of such men as Sgt. Charles Floyd, the only expedition member to die; Sgt. Patrick Gass, who lived until 1870, the last surviving member of the expedition; Sgt. Nathaniel Hale Pryor, husband to an Osage woman; and York, Clark's slave, who was freed after the expedition. The men who were instrumental to the success of the Lewis and Clark expedition come to life in this volume. Through the aid of a detailed biographical roster and a composite diary of the expedition that highlights the roles and actions of the expedition's members, Charles G. Clarke affords readers precious glimpses of those who have long stood in the shadows of Lewis and Clark. Disagreements and achievements, ailments and addictions, and colorful personalities and daily tasks are all vividly rendered in these pages. The result is an unforgettable portrait of the corps of diverse characters who undertook a remarkable journey across the western half of the continent almost two hundred years ago.
Yesterday in the Hills recalls life in North Georgia from the 1890s until World War II and records vanished and vanishing folkways of the region. Here is folklore at its best--seen from the inside and mediated though the heart. Yesterday in the Hills is built upon the bedrock of experience and memory, but its sharply drawn characters and beautifully proportioned narrative transcend reminiscence and realistically depict hill country life as it once was.
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